The tea parties, inspired by Rand, have put the GOP into a box. Unable to rely on courage, Republicans in the House and Senate cower and shake when confronted by this small, loud, rude minority who are NOT Republicans.

Then again, the far right has so hen-pecked the GOP it is a wonder they are all not a quivering mass of play dough, waiting to be squished into what ever form the latest group of people with the largest megaphone and the rudest mouths wish them to be.

Don’t expect courage out of the GOP. I guess we should consider them little more than battered spouses, being beaten, praised, threatened, beaten, threatened, praises a little, then beaten to a bloody pulp.

“…Republican lawmakers and aides tell POLITICO that the debt-limit increase is in danger, in part, because it’s not a major issue of concern for most voters. On top of that, Republicans say, the White House has undermined its own credibility by moving the expected date of default repeatedly, giving them little confidence in pronouncements of impending disaster.

“No one is saying, ‘Raise the debt limit.’ No one. Zero. Unless you pay really close attention to politics, you’re not talking about the debt ceiling,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said of his interactions with constituents. Of his colleagues, he said, “Everyone’s getting the TARP feeling again.”…”

The real problem is the fact that the GOP has never really minded raising the debt ceiling, but the Dems, when GWB was in office, were horrible about it. Now that Obama is in office, the GOP is being nasty about it.

We all know this is about pandering to the “base”. The problem is the tea parties are not the GOP base. They are the Ron Paul base. They are the Michele Bachmann air-head base. Republicans, N – O – R – M – A – L, are quite rational about the subject. The problems we are dealing with irrational tea party twits who are not rational individuals. They are Ayn Rand disciples. They are the libertarians. They have infiltrated and corrupted the GOP.

Think Progress

Libertarians have espoused Ayn Rand’s financial values of me first, no rules, only profit. At this point The Pink Flamingo could point out that the only truly Randian culture I’ve ever encountered is the Ferengi.

“…”Our war now is with the Republican Party,” he added. “We need to send home a whole boatload of RINOs…”

It is all about Ayn Rand and her perverted view of the world.

“…Ayn Rand’s world is one without community, a place where rugged individuals achieve success all on their own. Rand is therefore blind to the societal infrastructure that makes the accumulation of wealth possible and makes a polity stable enough for an economy to function. I would suggest that the logical outcome of Rand’s philosophy is a fractured world, where the wealthy pay paramilitary forces to protect them in their gated communities. It is a world not of some ideal, free market competition, but one in which the absence of regulations leads to monopolization, the further concentration of wealth, and the breakdown of consumer protections. And in that sort of world, the production of wealth becomes more difficult, even for the wealthy. As trite as the phrase has become, it does take a village. Individual success and triumph often requires individual initiative and perseverance, but it also depends upon so much else and so many other people to create and maintain the foundations of a stable society.

Rand’s lone individual is an illusion that must be challenged, not only because it is a lie, but because it will never work, at least not in the long run. If Ron and Rand Paul and the like achieve their goals, we will not see renewed prosperity, but rather the fraying of our society and economy, as healthcare and then education and then even fire and police protection become privatized. The inequalities of opportunity will only grow, and the dream of American mobility, already not as realistic a dream as many people imagine, will become a genuine fantasy….”

The Pink Flamingo has been telling you that the tea parties are NOT Republican. Want proof?

“…”There isn’t any urgency among the establishment Republicans,” said Phillip Dennis of the Dallas Tea Party. “They just don’t get that we elected them not because we love them, but only because they weren’t Democrats.”

“Our war now is with the Republican Party,” he added. “We need to send home a whole boatload of RINOs.”

So far the only high-profile attempt to “primary” a moderate Republican in 2012 is Indiana, where conservative state treasurer Richard Mourdock is challenging Senator Dick Lugar, who has steadfastly refused to change his views.

But others are mentioned as possible. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch is one, though no challenger has yet come forward. Tea Party groups in a number of states are eyeing potential candidates for House races, but say their searches are still in the early stages.

Perhaps the highest-profile member of the House whom Tea Partiers hope to unseat is Eric Cantor. Karen Hurd of the Virginia Tea Party Alliance is working on a two-pronged strategy to challenge him. The House Majority leader is considered conservative by many, but Hurd says he is a RINO.

Hurd is compiling an “information campaign” highlighting his record, including voting for the unpopular 2008 bank bailout. If the campaign gains traction, Hurd wants to find a challenger, though she acknowledges that is a tall order. Cantor’s is a safe seat and he can raise a lot of money.

“Right now Cantor is impregnable, but if we can make him vulnerable then he can be primaried,” Hurd said. “A few years ago challenging Cantor was inconceivable. The big change now is that while it’s a huge challenge, it’s not impossible.”…”

Real Republicans are terrified of the tea parties because we know they are not GOP, that they are basically libertarian, dishonest, duplicitous, individuals who will do anything to get their own way.

Huffington Post

We all know the Tea Party is in love with Ayn Rand – and Ron Paul. The real question should be about their allegiance to Rand or the Country. Are the tea partiers people who believe on defaulting on their credit cards? That is the only logical answer to their pathetic behavior about the debt.

There is one other little ditty going on here and it involves the cowardly behavior of the GOP, our Republican leaders and the fact that the tea parties are a bunch of irrational bullies. Then again, most of them are Ron Paul Bots, so what else can a person expect.

Of course, we can’t discount the duplicity and the dishonesty of the Dems, playing the debt ceiling thing for all it is worth!

Who died and made these people God?

“…That answer incensed many of the Tea Party activists, for whom raising the debt limit is anathema.

“You could have knocked me out of my chair,” said Denise Robertson, a computer programer who belongs to the Preble County Liberty Group. “Fifty years?”

She said “my fantasy now” is someone will challenge Boehner in the 2012 Republican primaries. “If we could find someone good to run against him, I’d campaign for them every day,” Robertson said.

“I am sick of the tears,” she added, a sarcastic reference to Boehner’s famous propensity to cry. “I want results.”

Fed up with “broken promises,” some Tea Party activists have already moved beyond the fantasy stage and aim to “primary” Republicans who have let them down — that is, challenge them in primaries. Some talk of long-shot attempts to unseat leaders like House Majority Whip Eric Cantor.

Led by Boehner, Republicans in Congress are at odds with Democrats and the White House over how to raise the limit on how much debt the United States can afford. President Barack Obama’s administration warns of global financial chaos if lawmakers do not increase the current cap of $14.3 trillion.

Boehner, in a May 9 speech in New York, did insist that any increase to the debt limit include “cuts in trillions.” But conservatives expect the Republicans will not uphold his demand.

If the Republicans lose the debt limit battle, more Tea Party groups say they will aggressively seek candidates to challenge establishment figures in the 2012 primaries.

“At this point, all of them are potential targets,” said Dawn Wildman, president of the SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition, who lives in San Diego. “All the way up to Boehner.”…z’

Huffington Post

The Tea Parties are pushing the GOP to default on debt ceiling. Until the tea parties, raising the debt ceiling was a GOP thing. From Media Matters: 2006

Media Matters

Now, fast forward a few years. Something strange is going on here. The Pink Flamingo is beginning to suspect that it is all about politics.

Think ProgressNational Journal

David Frum wrote:

“…Everybody seems to assume that the rules will be reasserted before the game gets too dangerous. Maybe. Let’s hope. But one year’s outrageous innovation has a bad habit of becoming next year’s new normal. Anything a Republican Congress can do to a Democratic president, a Democratic Congress can do to a Republican president. Americans like analogies to ancient Rome: a republic felled by overcentralized power. They owe it to themselves to study the Polish commonwealth: a republic wrecked by an irresponsible legislature….”

This is about a world where members of the House and Senate are not encouraged to do the statesman thing. Instead, if they show any leadership, like Lindsey does, they are denigrated. Yea, Rand’s dog eat dog life sounds nice to some. It doesn’t inspire honor or decency. Neither do the tea parties.

Sky Dancing BlogFrum Forum

Jared Bernstein has one of the most logical commentaries I’ve see to date about the debt. It echos what The Pink Flamingo has been thinking, but I’m just a pathetic dyslexic who can’t balance a check book.

“…Then, there’s the economy, and what even the threat of default would mean to financial markets and the real economy (the latter being jobs, incomes, stuff like that which kinda matters to people). Alan Blinder gives the gory details this AM is the WSJ. His point about the fiscal contraction this would engender—the amount of money this would pull out of the economy—at a time of already very high unemployment is very important.

(Note: Some point out that a sovereign nation whose debt is in its own currency cannot default because we can print money. But that would be a terrible solution with essentially the same consequences.)

All of the above is well known and understood, if not heeded, by many in this debate.

But here’s one thing that I think is missing: a rationale for borrowing at all. There’s deep and serious misunderstanding of this point. Too many people think deficits and debt are bad and they are not. They are an important and necessary part of our economic life. And yes, like anything else in life, you can overdo it.

We would all, households, business, and government sector, be less productive and less well-off if we couldn’t borrow to invest in our future. Think about borrowing for college or starting a business. Our fluid credit markets are one of the things that make our economy strong (recall what happened when they froze a few short years ago).

If any of these sectors, including the public sector, failed to borrow due to irrational fear of deficits when the return on our investments is potentially positive, we’d be a lot worse off.

And, of course, when the private sector stumbles, the government must temporarily run deficits to offset the shortfall in private sector demand. To fail to do so is to consign millions to unnecessary joblessness and to sacrifice—forever— potential growth and income.

Now, none of this should be taken to imply that borrowing is always good. To add to the debt to pay for inefficient consumption of health care, for example, is an unsustainable problem we must solve.

It’s also the case that our debt should not be “structural,” meaning we should balance revenues and spending so that in good times we pay down the debt…it doesn’t have to disappear, but you definitely want it shrinking as a share of the economy in economic expansions. This is also essential to a healthy economy, and once they raise the debt ceiling, policy makers need to turn to this right away…”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SJ Reidhead (aka The Pink Flamingo) is a writer based in New Mexico. The author of two published novels, both westerns: Dust Devil and The Second Mrs. Earp and two published works of non-fictions: TRAVESTY: Frank Waters Earp Agenda Exposed and A Church for Helldorado, Endicott Peabody's 1882 Tombstone Diary. One of the leading authorities on the life of Wyatt Earp and Tombstone during the Earp years, she is writing a series of murder mysteries set in modern day Tombstone. The author is also working on a book about fashion in the Wild West. When complete, there will be over 2100 unpublished antique photographs dating from 1855-1910.

The author's work has appeared in Wild West, True West, Blogcritics, and The Tombstone Times. Recently the author has had to deal with a father who succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease. This is leading to a book dealing with the frustrations of dealing with the frustrations of the disease, finance, legal, health-care, and things no one bothers telling families about it. A portion of the book will contain entries from a blog she kept, detailing the struggle with her father's AD. She is also working on a murder mystery series set in modern day Tombstone and Cochise County. Several books of essays on Christian living are currently in edits. A book of essays and revisions of articles about Wyatt Earp has been completed and will include her latest work detailing her theory about the murder of his second wife, Mattie.

SJ Reidhead has been involved in Republican politics since she was 'a little kid'. During the Reagan years she was a lobbyist working with various non-profit organizations who were attempting to salvage NASA and the American space program after the disastrous Carter years. In spite of ups and downs, and numerous disappointments, politically, it is obvious the only political hope for this country is via the Republican Party. Along with politics she is an opera fanatic, has been known to stalk baritones to the point of being a baritone junkie, and loves baseball.

The Pink Flamingo went on line on October 4, 2005.

THE PINK FLAMINGO STORY

It started out as a joke. During the seven years I worked with the girls of my parish, leading a youth group, one of the things that I stressed were manners. Part of having manners, the way I see it, is to know how to set a proper table, host a party, cater it, and clean up afterward. I was fortunate enough to have a group of very talented girls in my youth group. They learned how to plan for, and execute large church functions, very properly. During one such function I noticed there were several incredibly tacky pink flamingos sitting on the table. Knowing the girls were up to something, I said nothing. A few months later they did the same thing at a function I was hosting at my home. I said nothing. They had a birthday party for me. More pink flamingos appeared - and a joke was born.

Thanks to the girls, all of whom are now grown, I have a collection of pink flamingos. It has become an ongoing joke. When I began working on my political blog, I realized the only possibly title was The Pink Flamingo!